‘Contesting Identity and the Meta-praxis of Drawing’, paper presented by Anthony Auerbach in The Practice of Drawing and the Construction of Artistic Identity, chaired by Alicia Weisberg-Roberts, College Art Association Annual Conference, New York, 15 February 2007.

The meta-praxis of drawing is an approach which reflects on its own conditions of production and reception. It is both an internal affair and a transgression of the norm because it tends to highlight aspects of drawing which have been conventionalised in artistic practice — geometry, for example, or pornography — as other than art. In this paper, I discuss the late graphic works of Josef Albers (1888–1976) and works by Fiona Banner (1966–), which exhibit procedures and strategies of production which challenge conventional expectations of artistic drawing. I suggest how drawing has been used to elaborate a critique of identity and why it calls for a cross-disciplinary interpretation.

This paper has not yet been published. Only the opening paragraphs are reproduced here. Please contact me if you would like to see a full transcript of the paper I read at the conference.

‘No smock, no skylight, no studio, no palette, no easel, no brushes, no medium, no canvas, [...] no variation in texture or “matière”, no personal handwriting, no stylisation, no tricks, no “twinkling of the eyes,”’ (40) [note 1] reports Elaine de Kooning in her article ‘Albers Paints a Picture’. The words belong to Josef Albers and ‘... Paints a Picture’ was a long-running feature of Art News in which each month a reporter visited a different artist in his studio to discuss his practice [note 2]. The articles were accompanied by photographs of the artist at work amid the paraphernalia of the artistic interior, very often with particular devotion paid to palettes, brushes, easels, sketches and so on.

In Art News, ‘... Paints a Picture’ was the only regular editorial feature dedicated to art practice and technique, but a glance at the advertising pages suggests that art-practitioners formed a significant proportion of the readership. Ads for materials and equipment made their appeal at least partly by identification with the traditional image of the artist, for instance with Rembrandt-branded colours or Sargent-branded brushes ‘For the most exacting artist ...’ [note 3]. The editorial line of photographs of professional artists at work lent support and authenticity to such images. [note 4]

Albers clearly knew the form and got his point across in both words and images [note 5]. He is shown, seated in a nondescript interior in a white shirt, with just a knife in one hand and a paint tube in the other.

Albers could have added to his list repudiating the stereotypical attributes of the artist, no drawing — if it were not for the faint lines which circumscribed the zones of colour in his painting [note 6]. In form, these marks merely echoed the shape of material square of the painting’s hardboard support and in function were only a guide for applying the paint. All but obliterated in the process, in Homage to the Square, drawing was left with no more than a virtual existence at the labile boundaries between the colours.

For all Albers’s insistence that ‘someone else could have executed it’ (40), what remains of drawing induces the writer to state, with the conviction of a connoisseur:

From the ruled lines which are, at last, peculiarly gentle and tentative, to the opaque colors lying next to one another in a delicate translucent atmosphere, an unadmitted sensibility stamps each aspect of this art, denying its first impersonal impact and maintaining, finally, that no one of his quiet pictures could have been painted by any one but Josef Albers himself. (58)

This conclusion honours both Albers and drawing (not to mention the writer herself) according to the legend of Apelles and Protogenes, Pliny’s tale of artistic recognition and rivalry in which the master of Rhodes identified his visitor unmistakably in the mere trace of a fine, straight line. Or put another way: the tale of how a line alone, without burden of representation, could be entirely adequate as a calling card, provided the caller is sufficiently distinguished and the called-on sufficiently perceptive. Thus Apelles paid homage to Protogenes in leaving his mark and recouped it in the latter’s recognition (in this case also exacting tribute for not-to-be-outdone virtuosity).

The story was promoted by Renaissance art theorists as the epitome of connoisseurship, confirming both ‘the intimate identification of the artist with his mark’ [note 7] and the challenge for the connoisseur, being (again, as David Rosand puts it) ‘to discover the man behind the mark’ [note 8]

The contestation of artistic identity Albers staged for Art News clearly did not persuade the reporter and in any case could not avoid self-contradiction [note 9] Like everyone else, Albers provided his autograph signature for the heading of the article and its publication doubtless helped establish Homage to the Square as his trademark. The radical counterpart to Albers’s protestations as a painter, I think, is in his drawing practice.

... return: On drawing

Notes

1. Elaine de Kooning, ‘Albers Paints a Picture’, in Art News Vol. 49, No. 7, Part 1 (November 1950), pp. 40–43, 57–58. [back to text]
2. Needless to say, in 1950 the eligible artists were exclusively male. Among Albers’s companions in 1950 were Hyman Bloom, Hans Hofmann, Andrew Wyeth, Jacques Lipschitz and Wifredo Lam. [back to text]
3. A drawing of the ‘exacting artist’ was depicted, dressed in smock and beret, examining the product. [back to text]
4. The advertisers also promised what might be termed modernist improvements such as the Revolving Brush Holder, THE CONTEMPO, ‘a completely portable artist’s studio,’ Anthony's disposable palette, and the HULL “INSTANT” STUDIO, ‘TAKES LESS SPACE THAN THE AVERAGE TV SET!’ The last item was advertised a little later in the 1950s. [back to text]
5. On the relationship between Albers’s teaching and his art, de Kooning comments, ‘his own paintings make brilliant demonstrations of his verbal theories.’ [back to text]
6. Ruled with a 7H pencil, as de Kooning points out (58). [back to text]
7. David Rosand, Drawing Acts: studies in graphic expression and representation (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 18. [back to text]
8. Drawing Acts, p. xxii. [back to text]
9. The effort to eliminate drawing from the practice of painting was hardly a threat to artistic identity, since it belongs to centuries of artistic debate over the primacy of line versus colour. Besides, Albers’s Homage to the Square was still an easel-sized oil painting, equipped with custom-made frame, done with artist’s colours. Even if using the paints, like Albers did, as readymades, was not customary, the technique of the readymade, it should be remembered, is nothing other than the assertion of artistic identity unmediated by traditional notions of skill. [back to text]